Poquoson Wants To Become `Home' To Area Watermen

Dredging Channel Could Lure Businesses

December 14, 1993|By JENNIFER ANDES Daily Press

Poquoson City Council, desperate to save its struggling seafood industry, is considering spending nearly $250,000 during the next five years to build what one official called "a home" for area watermen.

"Small work boats are being pushed out of other places" on the Peninsula, city engineer Eileen Leininger said, speaking for a committee formed by the council to study the city's seafood industry.

The Messick Point Economic Development Committee, comprised of councilmen and watermen, "kind of wanted to make a home for them and thought this would be a good place," she told the council Monday.

State and federal grants have provided most of the $1.3 million Poquoson has already invested in Messick Point, a port at the end of Messick Road and the hub of the city's seafood industry.

A vote early next year on whether to spend $117,000 toward a $234,000 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers feasibility study of dredging a channel to Back Creek would be the "first major expenditure of city funds," Leininger said.

The city wants to increase the depth of the channel from three to six feet to make it easier for Chesapeake Bay boats to maneuver in Messick Point, which should draw more watermen to the port, Leininger said.

Unlike Hampton and other areas, where downtown development has driven out much of the seafood industry, Poquoson wants to encourage watermen and small work boats to use Messick Point, she said.

If approved by council, the city would contribute $120,000 toward the estimated $600,000 cost of the dredging. The corps would pay the balance.

Combined with the costs of the feasibility study, the city's total contribution toward the dredging would be nearly $250,000, unless the city locates additional grant money, Leininger said.

The dredging, which would be completed in late 1997 at the earliest, should give the city leverage to lure three new seafood processing facilities to Messick Point in addition to the five existing businesses, Leininger said.

The businesses would lease land on 14 acres the city purchased at Messick Point with a $500,000 Virginia Port Authority Grant, available in two equal installments during the next two years.

In addition to the processors, the city can expect to attract a marine repair shop, restaurant/fish market and marine supply store, Leininger said, based on an assessment of the land by K.W. Poore, a Richmond consulting firm.

Property leases and taxes should provide the city with $135,000 in annual revenue, and the development is expected to generate up to 100 additional jobs, Leininger said.

Council members spoke in favor of the project as a benefit to watermen and the city.

"It can do nothing but help the watermen," councilman James T. Holloway Jr. said.

The additional processors, he said, should enable them to get better prices for their catch.

Moving all or part of the Poquoson Seafood Festival and other recreational activities to Messick Point should also benefit the industry, Leininger said.

Plans to dredge the channel and develop the 14 acres follow at least a decade of improvements that Holloway said have saved the existing industries at Messick Point.

"I suspect those businesses would be pretty well shut down today," he said, had the city not extended sewer service to the area and replaced the two-inch water line with an eight-inch line.